Hopefully_Anonymous comments on Timeless Control - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 June 2008 05:16AM

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Comment author: Hopefully_Anonymous 09 June 2008 07:37:38AM 0 points [-]

Cyan, I'm not sure you about assertion that the fire isn't performing a computation. For example, we could structure the fire's environment such that in burning it performs a computation. But then one could look at any "natural" environment a fire burns in as something it is similarly performing a computation of. Also, any example you'd give of computations to distinguish them from fires burning may be viewable as energy passing through structured and/or "natural" environments.

I'm sure people smarter and more expert than I am have put good thought into this, for example in information theory.